Everything you always wanted to know about proofreading but were afraid to ask!

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Monthly Archives: April 2014

Working on for yourself and from home is the biggest test of your self-motivation, isn’t it? Not to mention self-discipline! You know – I’ll just have one more cup of coffee and watch the episode of Game of Thrones I missed last night, and then I really should go on Facebook, just to catch up with everyone and look at my writers’ groups…

Most important, I think, is being a good boss – in other words, be good to yourself! Writers, proofreaders and editors all know what it’s like to be the point where the buck stops – but have you, as a boss given yourself, as an employee, a good job description?

I think I’m a good boss, I’ve created a nice work environment! I live by the sea, and do proofreading work for authors from all over the world. It’s strange to be working on a novel written by someone who lives a continent away, while I’m still in my pyjamas. (And with my proofreading head on, for the benefit of my US clients – you say ‘pajamas’ and we say ‘pyjamas’!) Here is the view from my desk, looking out onto the sea – the weather is lovely this morning; hello, everyone, I hardly ever get a chance to meet my clients, so this is my way of saying ‘howdy!’ Here’s the view from my window, when I look over my laptop (yes, that is a guy with a surfboard).

Honestly, I really am working, and I hardly ever play Solitaire or Minesweeper. Whoops, where did that come from?

I think having your own working environment exactly as you want it is very important. When I started working from home I gave a lot of thought to where I wanted to situate my laptop, because I knew it would be important to feel very comfortable in what I was doing. We’re all different; I love my view, I know some of my clients listen to music while writing. My sister, an author, writes in complete silence with the curtains drawn and facing a wall, because she doesn’t like any distractions. Whatever you choose, I think it must be right for YOU!

One thing I believe is that a boss gets better results if she doesn’t give her employee a hard time! So I don’t place unrealistic expectations on myself – I know that, because proofreading is so demanding of ultimate concentration, I must take a break for half an hour every 90 minutes or so. I do my best work like that. I go over and look at the sea (yes, I know I’m lucky, I appreciate it every day!), or do a bit of housework – something totally unrelated and NOT on a computer screen. That way, I come back to work nice and fresh.

As all those self-employed at home will know, it’s great to be able to set your own timetable. Even better when you’ve been engrossed in what you’re doing, and look up to find that three hours went past (that’s if you’re a writer, not a proofreader; my boss doesn’t let me work for that long without a break!). Don’t you feel pleased with yourself when you’ve had a really productive day? Makes me feel like this:

There’s also the time thing. Are you a lark or an owl? I’m a morning person, so I like to get started as soon as possible, and I never work after nine o’clock at night. I know some writers, though, who function best in the early hours of the morning – I think it’s important for you as a boss to allow yourself flexi-time! One tip I’d give anyone is to work out when your most productive time of day is, and try to get the bulk of your work done then, other commitments not demanding.

Oh, and just for fun, here’s a quiz I found to determine whether you’re a lark, a hummingbird or an owl!

I’m writing this piece for the benefit of all indie authors, whether just starting out or experienced, as I’m becoming increasingly aware that, sadly, advice about making proofreading (and editing) choices is very much needed.

Okay – you’ve finished your novel/novella/short stories, and would like to publish on Amazon for Kindle. You’re fairly confident your work is as good as you can make it, but you’d like an impartial, qualified third party to check it for those little errors that you know you may have missed, especially as you’ve read over your work many times and still keep noticing things. You don’t want any reviewers saying things like, ‘a good book spoilt by typos and punctuation errors’. So you look around for a proofreader. You Google, you compare prices, you ask around on Twitter.

Unless money is no object, which is for most people not the case, you have a limited budget to spend on the production of your book, and certainly don’t want to waste your money. There are many great proofreaders and editorsout there – I know a fair few. There are also, unfortunately, two kinds of bad proofreaders: the Cowboys and the Inept. Beware of them!

The Cowboys

These people will take your money and do little if anything for you. At worst, they just run your work through spellcheck. I would call them thieves, because they take your money under false pretences. I’ve seen some horrifying results of dealing with Cowboys, first hand, from the experience of authors I’ve met online, or worked with. These are just a few:

A short story that started with a missing apostrophe in the first word

A 15,000 word novella that had supposedly been proofread 3 times, in which I subsequently found 222 errors

A novel which had been through the hands of both an editor and a proofreader – but I found 94 errors in the first 8 pages

A book of short stories that a proofreader had charged a lot of money to work on – I found over 400 errors, which included a mistake in the first paragraph. My client was justifiably furious at having been taken for a ride the first time!

No proofreader is infallible (everyone can miss one or two errors), but my poor clients had been conned out of their money by people who had no intention of doing a proper job for them.

The Inept – almost as bad!

There are, I’m afraid to say, growing numbers of these. Some of them, sad to say, are intentionally deceptive, some are just misguided, but the end result is the same:

The person who loses out is YOU.

Many of the Inept are looking for a way to make money in ‘indie author land’, and have observed the growing demand for proofreaders/editors now that the self-publishing market is increasing on a daily basis. Some of them consider themselves qualified because they have a reasonable grasp of the English language, or because they write a bit themselves. Still others have been on ‘proofreading courses’, which should carry a government health warning, in my opinion. The pyramid starts here, with the course providers who rip-off the aspiring proofreaders; I feel sorry for the people who spend money on such courses, thinking it will help them earn money.

Beware the dodgy proofreading course!

Some of the courses promise their students guaranteed work (which is impossible), or that they can earn X amount of money per hour – no proofreader with any credibility would charge a client ‘per hour’, as it takes different people different amounts of time to read! Many courses teach and examine their students on all those clever little proofreading symbols, now pretty much obsolete in the proofreading business, which is now almost exclusively done online – even within journalism. I have yet to hear of one that mentions Track Changes, which is the tool a proofreader in today’s e-world needs. Track Changes enables the proofreader to make changes online, and the author to accept or reject the amendment. The idea of a proofreader sitting there with a paper manuscript and blue pen, arduously covering the pages with symbols, is years out of date. One course I looked at this morning actually says ‘most proofreading and copyediting is done on paper’, which is just a downright lie.

My other gripe about these courses is that having completed one (and thus being able to wave about the piece of paper saying they’ve passed the exam) doesn’t mean a person has the grammatical knowledge and experienced eye required for proofreading – or, similarly, the understanding of the market and experience of publishing required for editing. Editing courses (often run alongside the proofreading ones) are usually very brief, but in traditional publishing, people don’t become fully-fledged editors without literally years of full time experience at a more junior level.

A word about editing – my sister is a moderately successful indie author who edits her own work and says the following: “Over the past three and a half years I have written 7 novels, 1 novella, many short stories, and over 100 blog posts. I have never had a book review that calls into question my grammar or punctuation skills, but can see now that my first efforts at DIY editing were not as successful as my later ones. Adequate editing takes real experience; I read articles about it by those more experienced than myself, observe how traditionally published books are presented, and learn all the time – I’m currently editing a friend’s first novella, but I still wouldn’t consider myself qualified to charge people money for what I can do. I’ve heard many horror stories from author friends who’ve entrusted their work to so-called editors, and ended up with something worse, not better. One writer friend told me she’d had many of her delightfully worded sentences replaced by others that were not even grammatically correct. Doing a brief course will not teach you how to recognise superfluous detail, clichés of plot, narrative and dialogue, ‘clunky’ sentences and the frequently found wrongly assigned dependent clause if you can’t already identify them, any more than doing a creative writing course will make you a good writer if you have no basic talent.”

As there are so many proofreaders and editors out there, and the internet is a big place, I’d like to make some suggestions to help you find the right proofreader for you.

Don’t be lured in by flashy websites. Advertising blurb doesn’t guarantee results for the customer!

Some of the websites sound very impressive – but some have just taken the wording from the sites of experienced proofreaders/editors, in order to sound as if they know what they’re doing.

Read the testimonials with care. They should be from writers who have published work including the proofreader/editor’s changes (or at least presented CVs and student essays!). You’ll be paying out money to this person – make sure that others have happily done so before you! Some of the more unscrupulous actually fake references. There is a site called Writers Beware, which every writer should follow, co-founded by author Victoria Strauss, which ‘outs’ the con merchants:

So, how do you check out the genuine? Easy! A tried and tested proofreader will have a selection of testimonials, with the names of many clients you can contact via Twitter or Google. You should be able to read a sample of their work online; virtually all writers publish via Amazon, and it is possible to read a sample of every book on sale, by using the ‘Look Inside’ feature. I do realise that a proofreader who is just starting out will not have page after page of testimonials; everyone has to start somewhere, and many start off by working on a friend’s novel, as practice. If you are thinking of giving a chance to someone who has just started out in the business it’s important to …

… ask the proofreader to give you a free sample, i.e. work on just a few pages of your text, so you can see if what they do is to the standard you’re looking for. A proofreader or editor has to be the right ‘fit’ for you! When you get the results back, if you’re not sure, ask someone for a second opinion. One of the best ways to make your choice is simply word of mouth – ask more experienced writers who they use.

Please don’t expect a good proofreader to be immediately available to work on your book. Anyone worth their salt will be booked up a few weeks in advance, so try to plan (as much as the creative process allows, of course) to set the process in motion before your book is ready to go to the proofreader.

Lastly, a word of advice to aspiring proofreaders – please, please ask around before splashing out money on these courses. There may be some good ones around, but the qualifications offered by many of themare not recognised by the publishing industry. Your most important qualification will be a very, very sound knowledge of the English language (by which I mean more than just being able to spot a superfluous apostrophe!), and an eagle eye!

And finally, I’d like to relate to you a cautionary tale from one of my regular clients, looking for a proofreader before she met me. Here is what she says:

“I posted a job on eLance.

I advertised for a proofreader for an anthology. Since most job applications on eLance are copypasted, “Dear Sir, I have read your job description carefully and am the best person for this job because I have the required skills and experience” without the applicant so much as reading the job description, I always post a test question. Those who don’t answer the question won’t be considered.

I decided to set a simple test.

I explained that I was looking for a proofreader who could work in both British and American English.

‘To check that you have read the job description and have the required skills, please tell me how you would correct this sentence: When autumn turned into winter, the travellers learnt about the judgement.‘

(The word ‘autumn’ signals that it’s meant to be British English. And the sentence is in perfectly correct British English. So a proofreader should leave it as it is.)

Uh-uh. This was an eye-opener. I was immediately inundated by applications – about fifty in the first few hours.

Quite a few people announced that they were top professional proofreaders, fully familiar with both British and American English… and then they proceeded to correct the sentence to, When autumn turned into winter, the travelers learned about the judgment.

Quite a few came up with a mishmash of British and American: When autumn turned into winter, the travellers learned about the judgment.

They even offered the correction in the same breath as declaring their competence regarding British and American English. I’m a leading expert in British and American English, and I have pleasure informing you that the correct version of the sentence is: When autumn turned into winter, the travellers learned about the judgment.

Out of the fifty, only two deduced that the word ‘autumn’ combined with all-British spelling signalled British English.

It gets worse. Several rewrote the sentence, changing it completely to improve the style. Winter had finally arrived, and the travelers were informed about the judgment.

It’s shocking to think that a proofreader might do that to a work of fiction, ruining the author’s voice, and it’s worrying because an editor might simply accept the Track Changes without realising what the proofreader had done.

In my job description, I even said that I didn’t want the proofreader to do any style edits. But really, no proofreader should rephrase an author’s work. (A copy editor may make suggestions, but a proofreader should not, let alone change things unasked.)”

So, as my final word, dear authors – take all the time you need when choosing a proofreader!